John Bauer

Fuelled by the Southern California surf culture of his youth, and the history and contemporary practices of abstraction, John Bauer produces abstract paintings that channel the infinite potential of both the Pacific Ocean and abstraction itself. Inspired by purists like Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko and postmodernists like Andy Warhol and Albert Oehlen, Bauer creates compositions using both traditional and unconventional means. His more traditional works are generated out of a process of daily interactions with his mid- to large-scale canvases, using brushes to build up, erase, and rework layers of gestural, exuberant marks. For his more experimental works, Bauer pulls from what he calls his “image bank” of Photoshop files. Using his computer, he crafts these images into compositions, which he then screen-prints in layers onto the canvas, creating works situated tantalizingly between the digital and the handmade.